Political manoeuvres

The need for speed

The momentum behind the Tories is not what it was

THE statue of John Bright, a Victorian champion of free trade, outside Manchester's magnificent town hall suggests a city enthusiastic about the market. The well-groomed professionals taking lunch-breaks from the service-sector jobs that dominate what was the world's first industrial city are not obvious socialists either.

Yet Manchester, like most of the urban north, has been enemy turf for the party of business in recent times. In 1987 the Conservatives had 39 MPs in the densely populated areas around Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle (see map). They now have just five, and they have been relegated to third place in many seats.

But Rob Adlard, head of the Manchester Conservative Association, is optimistic. The party has set up a northern board, headed by William Hague, the Yorkshire-born shadow foreign secretary, to improve campaigning in these regions. Money raised in the north now stays there instead of being sent to party headquarters.

There is also progress on the ground. The Tories have their first councillor on Manchester City Council (Faraz Bhatti, a former Liberal Democrat, defected in January), and Mr Adlard, who is running in the city-centre ward, is confident of joining him in May's local elections. The party's performance in greater Manchester is improving too. It controls Trafford Council, is gaining councillors in Salford and has a good chance of winning parliamentary seats such as Bolton West and Bury South.

Yet many blame an inability to resonate much beyond their southern heartland for the Tories' failure to extend their lead over Labour: the most recent ICM poll puts Tory support north of the Midlands at just 27%. Double-digit poll leads before Christmas have fallen to single digits (see chart). The strong momentum that has propelled David Cameron, the Conservative leader, since early October looks in danger of flagging.

Some of this is due to the government's own efforts to recover from a horrendous autumn, when the botched handling of speculation about a snap election, the loss of the personal data of 25m people and a series of party-funding scandals kicked the legs out from under its poll rating. Gordon Brown has drafted promising young ministers into his cabinet and strengthened his own backroom team with a new chief of staff and head of communications. And by embracing public-service reforms about which he used to sound ambiguous (he made a bold speech in favour of health-care reform in January), he has begun to give his government the sense of direction it lacked. Mishaps over tax policy (see article) have not yet dragged him seriously off course.

Yet some Tories blame their party's political strategy for their apparent lack of momentum. Conservative Home, an online forum frequented by Tory activists and elites alike, points to an emerging split within the party: “hares” urge more active and radically conservative opposition to the government, whereas “tortoises” favour caution, on the assumption that the government will defeat itself. Tim Montgomerie, a former party official who founded the website, says voters want “a change of direction not just a change of management”. Without a clear idea of how a Tory government would differ from Mr Brown's, voters disillusioned with Labour may plump for the Lib Dems (whose new leader, Nick Clegg, has helped engender a slight blip in support) or stay at home.

Tax is a crucial issue for the hares—they want the Tories to jettison their pledge to match Labour's spending plans in order to create room for promises of tax cuts. They argue that the surge in Tory support towards the end of 2007 began with the promise by George Osborne, the shadow chancellor (whom they claim as one of their own), to cut inheritance taxes. Tortoises, towards whom Mr Cameron is thought to lean, retort that the pledge worked only because it was offset by commitments to raise tax elsewhere—it was not the kind of overall cut that the Tories had offered the electorate unsuccessfully at the previous two general elections.

Public-service reform is another bone of contention. Hares are cheered by the party's emerging education policy, which offers the prospect of greater choice and competition, but deplore its health-care proposals as timid and soft on doctors. Cautious souls reply that the National Health Service, a Labour invention, is uniquely difficult ground for the Tories; their radical “patient's passport” voucher system flopped at the 2005 election.

Of course, other factors also help to explain the Conservatives' current sluggishness in the polls. Their strong showing in the 18 months after Mr Cameron—the party's first “posh” leader in 40 years—took over in December 2005 was seen as proof that class resentment in Britain had ended. That judgment may have been premature: the Tories' failure to score consistently much above 40% to Labour's low 30s prompts suggestions that class imposes a glass ceiling on the party after all, and that northern voters in particular are unable to connect with it. Other Tory-watchers point to a problem of personnel—few Conservative MPs beyond the top half-dozen or so shadow-cabinet members can be said to be both especially able and loyal to Mr Cameron's centrist creed.

Yet there is little to be done about these obstacles. Etonian though he may be, Mr Cameron is the best leader the Tories have had since they entered opposition in 1997. Widening the party's talent pool is a long slog. It is surely possible to develop a plan to respond to Mr Brown's partial rehabilitation—tortoise-like in content to avoid abandoning the centre ground but hare-like in activity to dominate the headlines. With an election conceivably little more than a year away, the Tories cannot afford to take their time.